


Ever Dream

by Demenior



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Child Death, Implied Violence, M/M, all in the background, blade of marmora, could be gen too, galra - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 22:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14530233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demenior/pseuds/Demenior
Summary: For Valkyriered who is finishing exams and a lot of really awesome stuff in her life, and needed a little gift <3





	Ever Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valkyriered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyriered/gifts).



> For Valkyriered who is finishing exams and a lot of really awesome stuff in her life, and needed a little gift <3

They never had a chance of saving the kits, Kolivan understands this later. They discovered their mole too late. Kolivan was too trusting, and it left him open to this kind of humiliation.

The creche wasn’t specifically Marmoran, but enough of his people had begun their lives here, had left kits here to be raised in safety outside the war, that it was a target. A pointed target.

 _I know who you are_ the threat says. _I know where you come from._

Antok bellows loudly as he overturns some rubble. There’s smoke and dust still hanging in the air from the bomb. He vanishes from view for a moment, and when he stands he’s cradling a small kit in his arms, made all the smaller in comparison to Antok’s bulk.

Antok kneels down as he holds the kit with one hand and gentle shakes it with the other. There’s no response.

Kolivan approaches slowly. Antok lets out a loud whine and nuzzles the kits face with his mask, growing more worried as he doesn’t get a response.

“Antok,” Kolivan says softly. He thinks he can identify the kit as being one of the ones that was delighting in Antok’s pretend-attacks yesterday, as Antok would stalk after the giggling kits and pounce at them.

Antok lets out another whine, higher pitched, frantic, scared, and he shakes the kit again. He removes the lower half of his mask to lick at the kit’s soot-covered face.

“Antok,” Kolivan says again, “set it down. The kit is dead.”

Antok hisses at him, teeth barred and sharp, before he goes back to trying to wake the kit up.

Other warriors are still digging for survivors. So far they have found none. Kolivan can only allow them a little while longer before they have to retreat, to hide away, and to deal with the traitor in their midst.

He leaves Antok to grieve.

 

* * *

 

It’s not that Kolivan does not grieve. But he cannot afford such luxuries in the middle of an attack. He wears himself thin, as he always does, and he finds the mole. An old friend, a trusted confidant who had grown weary of the pain of being alive. He wanted the peaceful retirement he thought the Empire could give him.

Kolivan sees to it that he suffers every death he caused.

The war does not end with that pale justice. Kolivan cleans the blood of his friend off of his blade, and considers that work done. There is more work in the morning. And right now, in this small pocket of existence, he can indulge in grief.

It’s a dangerous indulgence, as grief hounds at his heels like a hungry dog who will bite the hand that feeds him. Any attention Kolivan gives it threatens to overwhelm him. He has lost so many, seen so many tragedies and so many injustices in the world.

He opens the porthole and gazes into the cosmos, and tries to feel insignificant in it all.

Antok finds him there, and presses up against him, solid and unwavering. He waits, quiet and still save for the flick of his tail, as Kolivan drags himself from the depths of despair, and back to life.

“So young,” Kolivan sighs, “so young to be casualties.”

Antok whines. He’d carried the kit away from the site, been unwilling to relinquish it until Kolivan fought him for it.

So young, but not too young. There’s no such thing as too young in this war.

It comes for you in all ages, and Kolivan feels it now, clinging like meat to a bone. Sooner or later, it will catch him.

Antok is solid and sturdy in the dark. One day the war will take him too. It will take them all.

Kolivan feels that finish, that final point, out there in the horizon. But in the space between then and now, life and death, victory and defeat, there is work to do.

 

* * *

 

Antok clings to him as he sleeps, and Kolivan cannot find it in himself to push him away. Instead, he buries his claws into Antok's fur, and draws him closer.


End file.
